Tossed Open

                The doors of the church were open, flew open, for that matter, as the groom got tossed through them.
         He hit the ground, bounced a couple of times, and came to rest on his face. And while he didn't feel quite like getting up, the pressing crush of men running after him made it necessary.
         There was a good reason for them being after him, for tossing him, he couldn't begrudge them that. But there are two sides to every story, and he wasn't the only one that needed to get beaten.
         They weren't there when he got back to the apartment he and that woman shared. She was no longer his fiancee, she was “that woman.” And he went a little nuts, so maybe he should've just lashed out that night instead of getting payback his way.
         But he couldn't, because that was his friend doing what he did. And, no, there was no misunderstanding, no possibility of “It wasn't me” or “It's not what it looks like.” When a man and a woman are all over each other, naked and stretched out on a couch, there's little room for interpretation.
         No chance of pleading his case, hopping away on the one leg he still had full use of. He stumbled again, couldn't catch himself, went down.
         He rolled to his back, the men of that woman's family closing in, and waited for their worst.
         “Don't suppose you guys want to hear why,” the groom said through bloody, chipped teeth. It must have been God's mercy shining down on a miserable stray lamb, because they did stop.
         “Ever been cheated on?,” he asked. All of the large posse looked at each other, then looked down. “That a yes?”
         A few nodded.
         “And what happened when you found out? Did you beat the guy up?”
         Some nods.
         “Yell and scream?”
         The same.
         “Any of you find them in the act?”
         Those men who nodded now glared with wide eyes, not at the man they just beat down, but off into the horizon, the vivid pictures, not as forgotten as they thought they were, painting themselves again, the pain returning.
         “So, I”ve wronged your sister, daughter, cousin, what have you, but it was the second wrong. It doesn't make a right, but a few beers and some stray words into a listening ear, and it made sense, you know?”
         A stretch of silence as the men considered their options, then the first word any of them spoke, it came from that woman's father.
         “So,” he asked, “who was it?”

         The doors of the church were opened.
         Then shut.
                Then cars loaded up.
         
         The doors of an apartment across town was open.
         Flew open, for that matter, as the best man was just tossed through it.